Re: [tied] Greek labiovelars

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From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>
Reply-To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [tied] Greek labiovelars
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:07:18 -0000

Andrew Jarette wrote, in a web-hostile format:
(It took me three attempts to get your post into a format to which I
could make a reply!)

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I know.  I use Hotmail, and I can't seem to get the functions whereby in your replies to previous messages, the words "so-and-so wrote:" appear, nor can I isolate text by means of the >> symbol except by deliberate manipulation and erasing of text, which I believe is not necessary for most of you.  Perhaps I should switch to Yahoo!, or another?

> So are you implying that the lack of voice or the presence of
aspiration makes the articulation of /kW/ and /gWH/ clearer than that
of /gW/, and therefore more likely to retain separate velar and labial
elements, since they are more audible due to greater clarity (from
lack of voice, clearer explosion, or presence of aspiration)?  Also,
do you believe the idea that Celtic speakers began to pronounce /gW/
as /b/ so as to balance the IE deficiency of /b/?

On one hand, the distinction between [kW] and [p] is greater than that
between [gW] and [b], so it is easier not to learn the distinction.
It is even easier if one never hears a contrast between [gW] and [b] -
quite possible if [b] is rare.

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That makes a lot of sense.  Thank you for making the issue clearer.


> To me that sounds like they deliberately selected /gW/ against /kW/
and /gWH/ for aesthetic reasons, which I would find rather
unbelievable (and plus they developed a deficiency of /p/ which was
only compensated for in the Brythonic branch, while remaining in
Goidelic which had enough /b/ -- so why didn't they (Goidelic
speakers) start pronouncing /kW/ or some other sound as /p/ to make up
for this deficiency?

Well, [gW] does not seem to be very stable.  As far as I can tell,
word-initially PIE *gWH merged with *g^H and *gH in Germanic -
possibly after affecting the following vowel.  [kW] is much stabler,
or at least the cluster [kw] is.

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I thought word-initially PIE *gWH became /w/ in Germanic -- the classical examples are /warmaz/ from *gWHormos, /welTjaz/ ("wild") from *gWHelt- (Ir. geilt, Welsh gwyllt), and I think also /wundo:/ from the *gWHen- root (although in most or all of these cases some scholars have suggested other origins, with IE *w- in each case).  I think this makes sense if one imagines that, like *gh/*g'h becoming the fricative /G/ in Germanic, *gWH originally became the sequence /Gw/ with voiced fricative "g", but that the fricative "g" became inaudible (much like English whiskey being represented as g�isqui in Spanish, where in many dialects /g/ is fricative even in initial position) or indistinguishable.

> Of course, I suppose chronology comes into play here, that perhaps
at one stage there was a balance between /p/ and /b/ in Goidelic).
> Unless it were an entirely natural process of equilibration -- but I
would expect that /kW/ and /gW/ would still be subject to
labialization just as /gW/ was, in this equilibration process.  I
guess that's where your explanation of the degree of sonorance of /gW/
would be a factor.

There's also the fact that some gaps in phonetic systems are stabler
than others.  For example, if a language has only 5 of /p/, /t/, /k/,
/b/, /d/ and /g/, the most likely missing consonant is /p/ or /g/.
Classical Arabic lacks both!

Richard.

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Another phenomenon that I have always found odd.  It seems there's a strong tendency for *p to become /f/ or bilabial fricative /P/ which can then become /h/ (as in Japanese) and even disappear (as in Celtic, if this was indeed the process there).  I suppose /p/ has a greater tendency to be pronounced more explosively than the other plosives, with audible friction, and therefore liability to be fricativized.  On the other hand, /g/, being guttural, is liable to be replaced by constriction towards the back of the mouth, producing voiced fricative /G/ which can then become /h/ as in some Slavic languages, or /x/ as in standard Dutch.  At least this is how I, a non-professional, try to reason the tendency for /p/ and /g/ to disappear from phonetic systems.

Andrew Jarrette

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